The respectable courtesan: Malka Pukhraj, music and the postcolonial nation. (1st May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Afzal-Khan, Fawzia
• Is Part Of: Performing Islam. Volume 6:Number 1(2017)
• Page Start: 41
• Page End: 59
• Publication Date: 2017-05-01
• Subjects: Performing arts -- Islamic countries -- Periodicals; Islamic countries -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; 700.48297
• DOI: 10.1386/pi.6.1.41_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2043-1015

Abstract

Within the spirit of tracing continuities between an occluded past (Hindu-majority India) with the present-day nation of Muslim Pakistan, this article examines Malka Pukhraj's memoir, Song Sung True (2003), which weaves a narrative of courtly and classical music and folklore traditions of early twentieth-century Indo-Pakistan in her performative work. As a classically trained female singer of India and Pakistan, Pukhraj enacts a tale of gender, class and 'respectability politics' that poses a challenge to traditional norms at one level, while paradoxically working within/even accepting some of these same norms. Her work can be read as a Pakistani-style 'queer' performative monologue that allows her to signify a persona as a singer and a woman at a particular historical juncture in India and later in Pakistan. And that resists fitting in to a monolithic definition of any of these constructs.